Upcoming Xbox One update will add a "do not disturb" feature and improve achievement tracking

Keep annoying notifications and / or friends at bay

If you're the type of person who sees gaming as a way of escaping the real world, you might get a little frustrated if your friends send you one too many messages while you're in-game. Fret not as Microsoft has your back.

The company has just announced a slew of upcoming Xbox One features for 2018, one of which is the new "Do not disturb" mode.

"Sometimes all you want to do is avoid all distractions and focus entirely on your game," Microsoft said in the announcement. "We'll be including a "Do not disturb" online status, which will suppress notifications and let your friends know that you're not available for another game or activity right now."

"Do not disturb" is hardly a revolutionary idea for social, gaming-focused platforms -- Discord and Steam already have similar functionality -- but it's a first for Xbox consoles. With how large and diverse the Xbox One's user base is, this is one feature that will likely see quite a bit of use.

Aside from adding this new status, additional updates in 2018 will bring optional scheduled themes (automatically switching between light and dark themes based on the time of day), additional "inactivity shutdown options," a streamlined community feed to improve the readability of comments and "Mini Game Hubs."

According to Microsoft, Mini Game Hubs will allow users to "access great content for the games [they've] played recently from a Game Hub without ever having to leave the action."

Though none of the previously-mentioned updates have an ETA yet, there's one new feature that does. The "Next Achievements" feature, launching for Xbox Insiders enrolled in the program's "Alpha ring" today, will allow you to view and sort a "cross-games list" of upcoming achievements as you progress towards them while also letting you filter and prioritize them based on how close you are to receiving them or how rare they are.